The lost twin in the Dream of the Womb

The title of the new book is "Womb twin surviviors, the lost twin in the Dream of the Womb. " Now some experts in prebirth psychology have complained about that, saying: "Well if this is supposed to be only a "dream", are you saying it's all a fantasy, that we made this up? Are you with Sigmund Freud then, who  talked about fantasies all the time? Like we dont remember being born, that we don't remember the womb? We have been working hard for decades to convince the world that we DO remember the womb, are you promoting the idea that its not real, all just a dream?"

My answer is that it's all a matter of words and definitions. The words "remember" or "memory"  got the sceptics screaming at me that we don't  remember the womb and telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for even suggesting the idea. ( See some of these extraordinary exchanges here if the psychology of scepticism interests you at all..)

Assuming  (with good reason, based on my experiences so far)  that scepticism on the subject of pre-birth memory is widespread, I have been very careful with my terminology. The word "dream" works psychologically because in post-traumatic stress the trauma is often re-experienced as a nightmare: the loss of a twin before birth can be traumatic. Dream also suggests a longing or hope, and any womb twin survivors who experience that the nameless painful yearning for Something that refuses to be named until a way to name it is found, will  agree. Subjectively, the lost memories of a womb twin have a dream-like quality - they are vague, nameless, haunting and often appear, truly and  symbolically, in dreams while  asleep.

Finally, its a matter of how we are learning to heal womb twin survivors, and we have come a long way in the last seven years. The womb twin work takes the Dream of the Womb; names it; validates it; puts strong biological evidence behind it, thereby makes sense of it; then peice by peice the Dream becomes a reality.  With the help of that reality the constant search for the lost twin eases, for in a sense the original reality of the twin has been found.  In time, the day of true awakening comes and the healing is complete - it took me five years, but I had to do it alone.

I look forward to the day when we have many womb twin survivors who have awoken from their Dream of the Womb and will be ready to reach out to others and enable them to experience the joy of living free of the Dream.

This how the Dream has been described:

Just behind my eyes, my Dream of the Womb 
is like a matrix through which I see the world. 
Like a dark, mysterious cloud whirling through the primal places 
of my unconscious mind, this Dream is my way of being. 
In the light of day, however hard I try, 
I cannot see through the cloud obscuring the meaning of this Dream. 
It is with me always; I cannot remember a time without this Dream. 
In the dark hours of solitude when there is no one there 
and all there is is emptiness and stillness, 
out of the corner of my eye, I catch the faintest glimmer of gold. 
It is elusive but it is always there, and it gives me hope. 
It is like a light to show me what came before the Dream. 
But I am convinced nothing existed before the Dream. 
The Dream is all I have.